Problem resizing new HDD on Dell

I tried to use TI 9.0.3677 to Clone an old 30GB HDD to a new 160GB WDC HDD. For some unknown reason it would not resize the NTFS partition. I could resize the hidden FAT32 Dell partition, but not the NTFS Windows XP partition. The only thing I can do is copy the partition directly onto the new HDD without resizing.

Does anyone have an idea what may be causing this pain? It's a Dell Dimension 2350.

You could try making a backup image of the drive and restoring that to your new drive. Maybe that would work, if clone doesn't. To resize, you'll have to select the partitions individually until you have them all. If you just check the box for the entire drive then you won't be able to resize.

Also, you might update TI 9 to the last build (3,854) and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm checking out this Dimension 2350 more and I'm curious. What would TI do if the BIOS did not support a HDD larger than 137GB? Is this the error I might see?

Doing a Google search on Dimension 2350's there seems to be some discussion on the web about what the maximum drive size supported is. I'm starting to think this Dell can't handle a 160GB HDD.

Thoughts?

TIA.

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My son has a Dim2350 and had the very same problem when he attempted to replace his 30GB HDD (with a 160GB) until he downloaded the latest Dim2350 BIOS from DELL's support site. After flashing his older BIOS all went well.

You might try adding an IDE or SATA PCI card and connecting the drive to that. In not sure on the age of the 2350, but I know that on my old 8100 I had to update the BIOS to support large hard drives.

Since it appears you have the latest BIOS, does the hard drive size/data show up correctly in the BIOS?

Do you have Disk Director or another bootable partition manager program? If you do, you could leave only the 160GB drive connected, boot from the partition manager cd and see if you can create a large partition on the new drive.

You might try adding an IDE or SATA PCI card and connecting the drive to that.

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You know, as luck would have it I actually have an extra Promise Ultra100 TX2. I'm beginning to think you may be right.

MudCrab said:

Since it appears you have the latest BIOS, does the hard drive size/data show up correctly in the BIOS?

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I never checked, good call. I'll check on that next.

MudCrab said:

Do you have Disk Director or another bootable partition manager program? If you do, you could leave only the 160GB drive connected, boot from the partition manager cd and see if you can create a large partition on the new drive.

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I don't, but I did try to image the disk "as-is" and resize the partition on the new HDD with the G'PartEd LiveCD Partition Editor. That didn't work at all, which got me to thinking this might be a BIOS & HDD size problem in the first place.

If you have no other way to verify if you can create a large partition, you could try this: With only the new 160GB drive connected and set to boot in the BIOS, boot from your Windows CD and go through the steps to install Windows. See if it can create a partition using the entire drive.

Also, when you did just clone the drive, I assume it had unallocated space at the end of the drive. Did this space show in Windows Disk Management? Can you create a partition in that space? If you can then it would seem the computer can work with the large drive it's just having problems with resizing.

What version of Windows are you using? XP SP2? Pre-SP1 doesn't support large hard drives correctly.

If you have no other way to verify if you can create a large partition, you could try this: With only the new 160GB drive connected and set to boot in the BIOS, boot from your Windows CD and go through the steps to install Windows. See if it can create a partition using the entire drive.

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Good call, I'll try that. I won't have access to this machine until Monday now.

MudCrab said:

Also, when you did just clone the drive, I assume it had unallocated space at the end of the drive. Did this space show in Windows Disk Management? Can you create a partition in that space? If you can then it would seem the computer can work with the large drive it's just having problems with resizing.

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I couldn't get the "new" drive to boot after I removed the old drive, so I can't say one way or the other.

MudCrab said:

What version of Windows are you using? XP SP2? Pre-SP1 doesn't support large hard drives correctly.